Inside the Star

Bangladesh on the Danforth

In the Mecca Restaurant, diners are enjoying Mohammad Miah's food the traditional way, delicately digging fingertips into the aromatic biryani. The scene is a lot like Miah's native Bangladesh, and after 25 years here, he couldn't be happier.

In the Mecca Restaurant, diners are enjoying Mohammad Miah's food the traditional way, delicately digging fingertips into the aromatic biryani. The scene is a lot like Miah's native Bangladesh, and after 25 years here, he couldn't be happier.

"The community has grown up and we don't have to go to the Little India to shop anymore," laughs Miah from behind the counter. "We have everything here. This is like our Bangladeshi market back home.

"When I first got here, there was nothing Bangladeshi. Now, we've taken over the local businesses and we just keep growing."

Ground-level storefronts like Miah's – bustling grocery stores, movie rental shops, the Desh Pharmacy and businesses offering help with taxes – may be the public face of Little Bangladesh, a stretch of Danforth between Dawes Rd. and Victoria Park Ave., just south of Crescent Town.

It's the part casual observers don't see that makes this place really feel like home: The vertical village.

Sheuly Begum has been in Canada for two years and can manage everyday life without stepping outside her apartment complex, part of a vibrant, self-sustaining community tucked away from the busy Danforth, its own world in seven highrise apartment buildings.

"I can go to the 21st floor to get my eyebrows done for $3 and a haircut for $7. It's convenient. It's cheap," says the 42-year-old mother of two, who shares a wing of the building with six other Bangladeshi families.

"Sometimes I just leave my door open so our neighbours know they are welcome," Begum adds, as two elderly women wave before leaving a toddler in her care.

"I know I can get help in the community when I need it."

If she wants to pray, an apartment unit serves as a prayer room for tenants who don't want to travel to a nearby mosque, especially handy for women residents and the elderly in wintertime.

If she feels sick, she can walk into the Crescent Town Health Centre, where doctors speak her language and understand her cultural and religious sensitivities.

Across from the clinic is a community centre that houses recreational and settlement programs for newcomers.

University of Toronto geography professor Sutama Ghosh has explored Little Bangladesh for an academic paper titled "The Production of Vertical Neighbourhoods."

"The residents of these vertical spaces in general and Bangladeshis in particular have also transformed these residential spaces into economic spaces," she notes.

The "forgotten cousin" of Greater Toronto's booming South Asian community, Bangladeshis are a growing force that have transformed what was once a neighbourhood in decline. They number perhaps 50,000, a group dwarfed by other nationalities represented in Canada's 1-million-member South Asian community.

The first wave of Bangladeshis arrived as refugees after the 1971 war of liberation from Pakistan, followed by a trickle of skilled immigrants in the 1990s. Those who have had a Western education are more likely to have arrived recently.

Besides Crescent Town, there are major pockets of Bangladeshis in Regent Park, the Eglinton Ave. and Markham Rd. area and a single apartment building in the Highway 401 and Don Mills Rd. area. Bangladeshis are the largest ethnic group in Crescent Town, accounting for more than 24 per cent of the population, up from 18 per cent in the 2001 census – and it is growing.

The community has changed a lot in the 20 years since brokerage consultant Ashraf Ali arrived.

"The earlier settlers were busy trying to survive in the new country. As the population started to grow, people started organizing themselves. When (Bangladeshi microcredit banker) Muhammad Yunus was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, it really instilled pride in the community to get united, to do more," says Ali. "We've been mistaken (for) Indians. Some of our businesses would be termed as Indian stores. Now we have a critical mass and we want to be more visible," he says. "We are like a banyan tree. We've planted our root and are continuing to grow."

Many of the older, established businesses in the neighbourhood have folded in recent years, replaced by entrepreneurs with a clear idea of the changing needs in the community.

Before Aslam Hemani took over the Hasty Market at the heart of Crescent Town, various franchisees had struggled to keep the place afloat selling wieners and pasta.

"At least 65 per cent of my clients are Bangladeshis. Our success is driven solely by the market demand," says Pakistan-born Hemani, who quickly changed the line of products.

The store now sports Bollywood DVDs and posters, as well as 4,800 specialty products, including a variety of long-and short-grain rice, halal meat and more than 50 kinds of fish – a staple for Bangladeshis.

"Bangladesh is a country of 52 rivers. We can buy fish here that you can't find in the markets in Bangladesh because they are all exported and smuggled out of the country," says Bangladeshi-Canadian Community Services project co-ordinator Afroza Akhter, as she picks up a foot-long hilsha fish, a specialty from the famous Padma River.

"Look at the pakori, zilapi and all the other sweets and biscuits," Akhter points out, pausing to greet another customer as "Bhabi" ("wife of my brother" in Bengali). "They remind me of my home and my childhood more than western cookies."

Most Bangladeshi men and women who settled in Canada were working in white-collar jobs before their migration, according to Ghosh. But in Canada, they are among the groups facing the toughest employment challenges. Only half of the men and 40 per cent of the women are employed full-time here, many with little or no job security. One-half of households earn less than $20,000 a year.

Many find the solution is to become their own boss. They replicate the entrepreneurial vitality of Bangladesh's villages with cottage industries, like the apartment-unit hairdressers and caterers. Or, like Shaikh Ahmed, a civil servant in Bangladesh, they work as a driving instructor in Toronto.

"Back home, many of us had very good jobs. In Canada, we have a very difficult time to get professional jobs," says Ahmed, who immigrated here via the United States in 1998. "Some of us used to have chauffeurs. All of a sudden, we become poor."

But Bangladeshis are proud of their rich culture and often indulge in literature and politics.

Ahmed, who has a master's degree in management, also runs a tiny bookshop, Anyamela, in Little Bangladesh. He has 2,000 imported Bengali books on the racks, including Gitanjali by Rabindranath Tagore, the Bengali writer honoured with the Nobel prize for Literature in 1913.

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